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  3. If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work force, skills, American firms have a problem. Human-resource management is

If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work force, skills, American firms have a problem. Human-resource management is

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问题    If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work force, skills, American firms have a problem. Human-resource management is not traditionally seen as central to the competitive survival of the firm in the United States. Skill acquisition is considered an individual responsibility. Labor is simply another factor of production to be hired—rented at the lowest possible cost—much as one buys raw materials or equipment.
   The hack of importance attached to human-resource management can be seen in the corporate hierarchy. In an American firm the chief financial officer is almost always second in command. The post of head of human-resource management is usually a specialized job, off at the edge of the corporate hierarchy. The executive who holds it is never consulted on major strategic decisions and has no chance to move up to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). By way of contrast, in Japan the head of human-resource
management is central—usually the second most important executive, after the CEO, in the firm’s hierarchy.
   While American firms often talk about the vast amounts spent on training their work forces, in fact they invest less in the skills of their employees than do either Japanese or German firms. The money they do invest is also more highly concentrated on professional and managerial employees. And the limited investments that are made in training workers are also much more narrowly focused on the specific skills necessary to do the next job rather than on the basic background skills that make it possible to absorb new technologies.
   As a result, problems emerge when new breakthrough technologies arrive. If American workers, for example, take much longer to learn how to operate new flexible manufacturing stations than workers in Germany (as they do), the effective cost of those stations is lower in Germany than it is in the United States. More time is required before equipment is up and running at capacity, and the need for extensive retraining generates costs and creates bottlenecks that limit the speed with which new equipment can be employed.  The result is a slower pace of technological change. And in the end the skills of the bottom half of the population affect the wages of the top half. If the bottom half can’t effectively staff the processes that have to be operated, the management and professional jobs that go with these processes will disappear.
According to the passage, the decisive factor in maintaining a firm’s competitive advantage is
选项 A、the introduction of new technologies
B、the improvement of workers’ basic skills
C、the rational composition of professional and managerial employees
D、the attachment of importance to the bottom half of the employees
答案B
解析 文章第一句"If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work-force，skills，American firms have a problem．”说明持续性的竞争优势取决于劳动力及其技能，而美国公司在这方面有问题；第二段又提出“．．．the basic background skills that make it“possible to absorb new technologies.”，所以[B]是保持公司竞争优势的决定性因素。
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